Sunday, August 15, 2010

Strong words from Claude Lanzmann about the pro-Hamas Lies in the MSM concerning the Turkish Thug Armada

Claude Lanzmann is a rare bird on today's political landscape. He was an assistant to Jean-Paul Sartre as a young man and inherited Sartre's mantle and legacy as chief editor of Sartre's heavy weight intellectual journal, Les Temps Modernes, after Sartre's death. He had strong words for Hamas and its Western supporters and sympathizers, including those in the French press and media, over the Turkish Thug Armada and the fighting on board the Mavi Marmara on 31 May 2010. We translate below his speech given at a rally in Paris on behalf of freedom for Gilad Shalit on 22 June 2010, as well as presenting the speech in French below that. Lanzmann's pro-Israel position shows once again the falsehood of the "right-left political spectrum" notion, especially but not only in regard to Israel.

Who Is Delegitimizing Israel?by Claude Lanzmann

What happened after Israel's boarding and seizure of the so-called humanitarian flotilla and what we could read and hear in so many newspapers, on all of our television networks, our radio stations, on a thousand unsupervised blogs, in discussions among web surfers in which hatred fought it out with stupidity, was really frightening. What joy, my friends, my brothers, what happiness in being able once again, without any restraint, to stigmatize Israel, a scapegoat laden with all crimes, and first of all with the original sin of existing. Those who were so prompt to condemn Israel, without having any other source of information than that thundered by Hamas propagandists and their faithful, didn't care one bit about the reality of the facts, of their genesis, of the reasons for the blockade, or of the warnings given by Tsahal to the "peace activists." They were only motivated in fact by one single dream: to get into a fight and thereby tear the veil off the true face of the Jews before the world: drinkers of blood, starvation-causers, thieves, cowards and I won't bother to go on; or, what comes down to the same thing, to unveil the true face of Israel, a pirate state. We instantaneously read and heard this obscene refrain in the dailies, on the broadcasting stations, and the networks, whose names it would be best not to mention.

The blockade has an origin: It is called Gilad Shalit, a young soldier fallen, in Israeli territory, into an ambush set by Hamas, and held hostage for four years now by his kidnappers, who play on the nerves of his family and the country by promising a phantom release. Hamas or Hezbollah have most usually handed back dead bodies for hundreds of live Palestinians that Israel had released, because this pirate state --it has proven it a hundred times-- has always been ready to repatriate its dead or its living at any price.

The second origin [of the blockade] is the Hamas itself, which declares itself in a state of war with Israel, having conducted indiscriminate bombardments of its villages for months without respite. This is the Hamas that calls in its press, its schools, in all its propaganda, for the eradication of the Jewish state. It is first of all by Hamas that the blockade was cynically imposed on Gaza. By Hamas but also by Egypt that, fearing for its regime from the jihadist contagion, has closed its land border at the south of the Gaza Strip. But, as we know, a profitable trade which enriches Arab millionaires brings all the merchandise possible and imaginable to Gaza through tunnels dug in the sands of Sinai.

Know this, detractors of Israel. You are being lied to and you are lying. Gaza is stuffed with goods. You can find there televisions, the most modern computerized gadgets, the IPhones, the IPads, the top of the line refrigerators, etc. And especially, people there eat as much as they need. No one in Gaza is dying of malnutrition nor suffers thirst nor hunger. Where are the fleshless bodies, where the skin hanging from the bones in the photographs of the plump, well-fed high officials of the Hamas government? Have you seen faces of emaciated children, skeletal bodies? We can be certain that if, by chance, they existed, the Hamas' master propagandists would transmit them to us continuously ad nauseam. No, Gaza is not the Warsaw Ghetto, though that may displease the true believers who hurriedly visit for several hours, though that may displease the UNRWA and Mister Goldstone. And let's finish off another lie. Israel never wanted to starve Gaza. It has, as is its right, demanded to inspect the merchandise. It forbids some things for security reasons and sends every day dozens of trucks that, starting from the Ashdod port, unload their contents at the northern entrance to the Gaza Strip.

Out of the six ships of the abovementioned flotilla, five, we know, let themselves be brought to Ashdod after being boarded non-violently by the Israeli navy. What they were carrying was put on the dock, checked and immediately shipped to the northern border of Gaza, where the Hamas people refused to accept delivery. The perishable materials spoiled in place. All that remained under the sun was a comical number of wheel chairs brought by the "humanitarians" for the legless amputees who form --in the "humanitarians'" minds the majority of the people of Gaza.

Don't imagine, good people, that Gaza is a brotherly, classless society. There are poor and rich in Gaza, billionaire land owners, living on the heights of luxury residences, who never raised a finger to help their supposed brethren of the poor neighborhoods and the refugee camps.

It was necessary that Gaza remain --and this is what Jean-Paul Sartre reproached them for before me in 1967, three months before the Six Day War-- a morbid focus of attention, a canker sore defying any solution (while it would have been so easy for the oil rich to help them) , thus making it possible to condemn Israel forever. That continues. The unanimous concert of loud, angry voices aroused by Israel's refusal to allow the humanitarian convoy to pass is the best proof of that. On the sixth boat, chartered by the Turkish branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch, the Israelis were awaited by armed men determined to make Jihad. That is, to kill and be killed, certain of being immediately received in Allah's dwelling by caressing maidens.

If we do not have the right to rebuke Israel for boarding and seizing the ships, we may be astonished at the impressive naiveté with which the soldiers acted. The naval commander had told them: "You will be greeted with spitting, insults, burning cigarettes. Above all, don't retaliate." What happened was entirely different: Coming down from a helocopter in a geostationary position above the Mavi Marmara, the soldiers slid down one by one on a smooth rope, letting themselves be picked off by long clubs, sling shots, iron bars, long knives, etc, before even touching the deck. Many were injured, some very seriously, one being thrown from the upper deck to the lower deck. He was found with his back broken. It is the rule in the Israeli army: the soldiers have the right to shoot if their lives are in danger. This was the case.

The investigating commission formed by Israel, a model democracy, will give its conclusions and it should be believed. The barking dogs understood moreover that they had gone too far and are now putting a muffler on their vitriolic invective. In such circumstances, we Jews have a duty of solidarity toward Israel in danger, threatened in the North as in the South by Ahmadinejad's allies. Meanwhile Ahmadinejad is readying his nuclear arsenal. The same duty of solidarity commands us to express and to bring, as rightful citizens of the French Republic, a severe judgment of contempt for the pathetic fools who call for a boycott of Israel and demand removing Israeli films from a schedule, which is a way of calling for its death. We will not allow that. It is not the policy of Israel that delegitimizes that state, as some would have us believe. It is first of all the irredentism of the Arab extremists and, we regret that a certain number of complacently conformist Jews, who have been silent up till now, were not more perceptive when they signed a text which, as the flotilla affair has unmistakably demonstrated, was a tissue of unrealistic ideals, unrealistic principles and unrealistic aspirations.

(a speech given on 22 June 2010 in Paris, during the demonstration organized by the CRIF, in support of Israel and Gilad Shalit) [the CRIF is the umbrellas organization of French Jews]

About

The world swims in lies. Who doesn't know that? Even the dupes are told there are lies about. We aim to dispel the fog of lies, especially about Israel, like our prophets of old and our poets like Yehudah haLevi.
We feature historic sources, documents, excerpts from the classics, etc.
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, While yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
The false prophets cry Peace, and there is no peace.
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About Me

צלום דבורה בת יהודה לייב ז''ל
Dvoyreh bas Yehudah Leyb, Eliyahu's mother. My own photo will have to await more peaceful times.
I have been an observer of
the human comedy, and the human tragedy for many years.